Recent MEA (More Electric Aircraft) concepts require new approaches to design and management of the electric system onboard. Bidirectional Buck-Boost Converter Units (BBCU's) used like bridges between power buses with different voltage require intelligent supervisory control for autonomous selection of operating modes. In this paper at low-level, sliding manifold-based strategies are employed to track desired current references, or to recover from overload within a prescribed time. At a higher level, three working modes are defined, (Buck-, Boost- and Intermediate-Mode), and scheduled by a high-level supervisory strategy. Stability proofs of the overall strategy require estimates of the Region of Attraction (ROA) for each controller, that are discussed in the paper. A typical aeronautic scenario is presented, with standard operating conditions followed by two types of overloads (the second more severe than the first) and finally a return to standard condition. Detailed numerical simulations show the effectiveness of the proposed novel control strategy in terms of stability and performance of the smart converter. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.